Release - Aerith

Here's the promised ALPHA (Frodo only).
Feel free to report any errors, missing buttons, dialogs and inconsistencies you notice.
I'm also very interested in your general impression and thoughts on usability.

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Hey everybody,

Today I want to introduce you to Aerith.
An XBMC skin that I've been working on for a little over a year now.
It is a very personal design, which makes great use of lively textures and bold colors.

I tried to keep it as simple as possible and only show what's interesting or necessary.
Additionally I made sure you will always find the same kind of information or controls in the same place, so you don't end up searching for them.

A lot of inspiration came from Welo, Netflix, premiumpixels, my own website ex01 and many more sources.
So thanks to everybody who inspired me.

I'm thankful for comments and suggestions, but please keep in mind this was mainly designed as my very own skin, so in most cases I will not make changes.

I will update this thread with status changes and new screenshots every now and then.

For now here are some mock ups.
For full 1080p goodness just click the thumbs.
If you like them you can also comment or fav it on deviantART.

I really like how it looks. Great work, I can really see your perfectionism expressed in this skin

Just one small remark. There seems to be lots of wasted space on the top and bottom. Perhaps change the button orientation on the top?
Another idea would be to make the top breadcrumb style. Like "Videos->Movies->Recently Added". Or "Videos->Movies->500 Days of Summer". That way it gives you more context and orientation.

Also, I think it would look great if you can overlay the fanart with the textured background (opacity ~30%).

TeOS Wrote:There seems to be lots of wasted space on the top and bottom.

I don't exactly think the space is wasted. Effective negative space in a design can actually be rather refreshing. I do agree with hitcher's comment on the dark text though. Perhaps inverting that out to a white or a lighter shade of grey would help.

Looking very lovely so far. The subtle details are very effective and add some nice depth, and I'm especially liking this rich warm color scheme. The dark text at the bottom is my only gripe. Keep it up!

Two things to mention:
The very light text on light background or dark text on black background is nice but nearly impossible to read. Just a little bit more contrast pleeease.
Second is the double progress bar in the playback window.. maybe you should focus on one.

Thanks for all the comments guys.
It's strange you all have troubles reading the dark text. It's fine for me, but maybe my screen is way too bright.
I think I'll play with the color scheme some more. Thanks for pointing it out!

as a rule i wouldn't put dark text on a dark background and vice-versa, when its on the tv its very hard to read.

maybe you can swap the colours around and see how it looks (light text on dark and so forth)

the skin has a lot of potential! i really like the settings screenshot with the icons. and i like the lifted/curved paper effect you did on the selected album covers/posters, don't think anyones done that for xbmc skin before.